Batting practice is over, and Cliff Floyd has some downtime before the start of that night's game, so he slowly folds his 6-foot-5 body in the chair that sits in front of his locker, careful not to land too hard, and has the same thought: "How the heck am I going to play tonight?"
Floyd fouled a ball off his right shin two nights earlier, and it still hurts. His left knee aches from when he was struck by a pitch later in the same game.
His 35-year-old body has been ground into one giant ache by the long season. His feet. His back. His shoulders. His legs. All hurt.
"How the heck am I going to play tonight?"
"Then you realize what's at stake, and at 6:55 (p.m.), 7 o'clock, it kicks in again," Floyd said. "The adrenaline kicks in, and you're ready to go. It's natural. It's fun."
It's the pennant race.
"It's the best time of the year, especially when you're playing for something," Trever Miller said. "You can't wait to get to the ballpark. It's like Christmas morning."
The Rays bring the pennant race to Yankee Stadium tonight for the start of a three-game weekend series with the New York Yankees. There are 18 games left in the season. They lead the second-place Boston Red Sox by 2½ games.
Guys like Miller and Floyd and Troy Percival and Dan Wheeler and Eric Hinske know the all about the grind of September baseball. Jason Bartlett and Grant Balfour, too.
Their bodies aches from the long season. Remember, pitchers and catchers reported Feb. 15. The Rays have played 144 regular season games. Don't forget the month of exhibition games.
The right knee Bartlett sprained in early July still gives him trouble.
Dioner Navarro's hamstrings are barking especially loud today after he caught all 14 innings Wednesday in Boston.
B.J. Upton is playing with a torn labrum in his left shoulder.
Carlos Peña is feeling every one one of the 11 fastballs that found a piece of his body.
All those ground balls to third that Willy Aybar stopped with his chest? Yep, they've left reminders.
And the shoulders and elbows of the pitchers? Let's not even go there.
"To the common man, I can tell you yes, it's taxing," Miller said. "As an athlete, I can tell you I'm not going to give into that. I won't tell anyone I'm hurting, I'm tired, I'm sore, I don't think I can go today, because all that work I've done was for this moment. It's a men's game. It's men's league baseball. They're not going to lay down for us. We find out a little bit about ourselves, what we have down deep. You grab a hold of it and ride it out. It's go time."
Whirlpools and trips to the trainer's room can only take you so far, Floyd said. The rest is up to you.
"Our bodies weren't meant to do what we do every single day," Floyd said. "At some point your body says, 'Hey, I'm going to shut down a little bit.' But regardless of what you got going on, you find a way to get the rest of your body going. If you ask all the guys in (the clubhouse) how tired they are, most of them will tell you, 'Pretty tired.' But you suck it up, go with the flow, and you make it happen."
It's 15 minutes to first pitch. Time to make it happen.
So Floyd grabs his bats and moves his creaky body to the dugout, walking on knees that have felt much better and have felt much worse.
A different thought comes to mind:
"If there is anything more fun than this, I want to know what it is."
It's go time.
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